Porous wooden cube by Linehouse captures Canadian wilderness

November 06, 2017

Text Alex ServiePhotos Dirk Weiblen

Shanghai – The Yo’Hood trade-fair stand by Linehouse brings a visually complex natural structure evocative of the Canadian wilderness to the Shanghai Expo Center. Created to showcase Herschel Supply at a streetwear trade event, the pop-up shop takes inspiration from the brand’s origins in Vancouver to celebrate the boundless nature that surrounds the Pacific Northwest metropolis.

The construction simultaneously captures fragility and density by defining space through a modernized, conceptualized log cabin. The timber structure employs a natural material in a gravity-defying linear pattern, with mirror-clad vertical columns camouflaging the support system and creating the illusion of transparency and levity.

At the same time, one side of the timber slats are painted in a gradation of hues which are only revealed as the viewer’s perspective revolves around the structure. Evocative of a sunset, the scene embodies the tranquillity of the wilderness, complementing the urban edge present in the dynamic form and clean lines of the structure. The tips of the linear beams are angled on one side of the façade, adding an inward-pointing direction consistent with the diagonal interior walls of the temporary store.

A black metal frame in a simplified shape of a traditional cabin barely outlines a volume that sits perfectly inside the structure. The background panels of these transparent voids provide an ethereal peek into the Canadian woods with a fragmented image of nature.

Linehouse combines the robust quality of solid wood with the weightlessness and transparency of the alpine atmosphere, resulting in a timber structure that appears to only partially exist and serves as a portal into nature through barely perceptible flashes of a distant landscape.